A flat-panel display is an electronic display in which a large orthogonal array of display devices, such as electro-luminescent devices, AC plasma display panels, DC plasma panels and field emission displays and the like form a flat screen.
The basic structure of an AC Plasma Display Panel, or PDP, comprises two glass plates with a conductor pattern of electrodes on the inner surfaces of each plate and separated by a gas filled gap. The conductors are configured in an x-y matrix with horizontal electrodes and vertical column transparent electrodes deposited at right angles to each other using thin-film techniques well known in the art. The electrodes of the AC-plasma panel display are covered with a thin glass dielectric layer. The glass plates are assembled together to form a sandwich with the distance between the two plates fixed by spacers. The edges of the plates are sealed and the cavity between the plates is evacuated and back-filled with neon and argon or a similar gas mixture. When the gas ionizes, the dielectrics charge like small capacitors so the sum of the drive voltage and the capacitive voltage is large enough to excite the gas contained between the glass plates and produce a glow discharge. As voltage is applied across the row and column electrodes, small light emitting pixels form a visual picture.
Barrier ribs are typically disposed between the foregoing insulating substrates so as to prevent cross-color and cross-pixel interference between the electrodes and increased resolution to provide a sharply defined picture. The barrier ribs provide a uniform discharge space between the glass plates by utilizing the barrier ribs height, width and pattern gap to achieve a desired pixel pitch. For example, barrier ribs of plasma display panels most desirably have a configuration of about 100 .mu.m in height and are as narrow as possible, preferably less than 20 .mu.m in width and spaced at about 120 .mu.m pitch. This requirement is necessary in order to achieve a color pixel pitch of 72 lines per inch, the printing industry standard point of type, which is equivalent to a sub-pixel pitch of 216 lines per inch with a red, green and blue phosphor stripe color arrangement. This pattern is commonly used to achieve color output in flat panel and many cathode ray tube displays with diagonal dimensions on the order of 20 to 40 inches used for displaying graphic and textual information in computer terminal equipment and television receivers.
An alternative geometry for an AC PDP is given according to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/629,723, incorporated herein by reference. In a PDP of this type, the backplate is manufactured by first constructing an array of microgrooves, metalizing the recessed surfaces of the microgrooves, applying a phosphorescent material on the microgroove surfaces co-incident with the metalized surfaces, and sealing with a front plate containing a dielectrically isolated conductor array generally orthogonal to the microgroove array, i.e., metal on groove (MOG) structure.
Flat panel displays, such as AC plasma display panels (AC-PDPs) are desired to have large screens, large capacity, and the ability to display full-color images. In particular, the AC PDPs are desired to provide more display lines and intensity levels and reliably rewrite their screens without decreasing the luminance of the screens.
In view of the foregoing, it is an object of the invention to provide a method and apparatus for driving the metal on groove (MOG) structure of an AC plasma display, which due to its geometry must operate differently than the prior art. It is a further object to apply voltage waveforms in such a way as to increase light output without increasing electrode width. Another object of the present invention is to provide a method and an apparatus for driving a lateral discharge plasma display panel that is capable of displaying at least 256 shades of gray.